Chapter 19 #3
Many videos. I spent months tracking every camera in every building, and somehow forgot that there exists one watcher who has known my face since the day it existed.
"You skipped the difficult part."
"Which part?"
I open my mouth. Whatever I spent years bracing for, it never had a shape. Just weight. "I— I don’t know, actually. I just thought there would be one."
"Did you want a parade? It is late, and I do not own a trumpet."
Another laugh gets out, wetter than the first. "No parade."
"Good. The neighbors would complain again."
The joke settles, and his voice comes back quieter beneath the radio."Were you afraid of me?"
"No." The lie is out before the truth can catch it, and it hangs there, sounding exactly as hollow as it is.
I stare at where my palm is clutching me knee.
He has never once, in my entire life, shown me the thing I was supposedly guarding against. The fear was never him.
The fear was the second after the words, when the outcome would belong to somebody else.
"Yes," I say. "But not because of you. Because saying it meant I couldn't control what happened next. "
"And what happened?"
I wipe under my eye with my thumb. "You made a trumpet joke."
"A very good joke."
"That’s debatable."
Theo's laugh comes through the door again, and my father's radio keeps playing on his end, and both of my lives are running at once, one on either side of me, with no wall between them anymore.
"Do they make you brave or careful?" my father asks.
My mind drifts to Theo on one knee in the corner, keeping the puck alive with two defensemen on his back. To Wall's A, and to the plate under foil, portioned by men who watched me long enough to learn which piece of chicken is mine.
"Brave," I say. "Terrifyingly."
"Good. Careful was your mother's job."
My eyes close again. He gives me time to breathe and doesn't comment on my needing it.
Finally, he says, "Bring them over for pierogi."
Them. No names demanded, no labels, no further explanation required. The whole thing granted in one sentence about dumplings.
My throat closes around the first try. The second gets out rough. "Okay. I'll call tomorrow," I manage.
"Send a thumb. Save your strength."
I smile at my own hand. "Dobranoc, Tato."
"Goodnight, Patryk."
The call ends, and I stay where I am.
My hand is trembling. I watch it do that.
This hand, the one that picked a rising shot out of the air in front of a full building a few hours ago, shaking around a phone because an old man made a trumpet joke.
The game took my legs and the call took the rest, and whatever is left sitting on this bed is lighter than what walked in. Lighter, and scraped open.
I manage to stand eventually.
The television is off now. The kitchen is down to the stove light, my plate is still under its foil, and both of them are already looking at me before I clear the hallway.
They gave me my privacy but wasted zero effort pretending they weren't waiting.
I stop at the edge of the kitchen. Somewhere out there exists a casual version of this. I don't go looking for it.
"I told my dad."
Theo freezes with his fork halfway up. Wall sets down his glass, slowly, like a sudden move might knock the moment over.
Nobody fills the silence. It's mine to fill.
"About you."
Theo’s fork comes all the way down and his eyes grow large. "You told him about me?"
"Both of you, Theo."
His face does several things at once, too fast to read even for me, and then he's off the counter and across the floor and his hand closes around my wrist.
"I'm fine," I say,
It has never worked on him once.
He pulls me toward the living room installs me on the couch, and folds himself against my ribs before I've finished landing.
Behind us the microwave starts humming, and a minute later Wall comes around the couch with my plate, steam rising off it, and puts it in my hands.
Then his palm arrives at the back of my neck, broad and warm and heavy, and I know this move, because it's mine.
I do it to them, on the nights they come apart.
Theo gives me time before he asks, which, from Theo, is heroism. He lasts about ten seconds. "What did he say?"
I look down at the plate they made me. "He wants to feed you both pierogi."
Theo bursts into tears.
No warning at all. One second he's breathing against my shoulder, and the next his face has crumpled and he's crying into my sleeve with his whole body.
Alarm cuts straight through my fog. "Are you crying?"
"No." He scrubs at his face with both hands, furious. "Your father weaponized carbs!"
Above my collar, Wall's hand tightens once. "Okay," he says.
Months of immersion have made me fluent, so I receive the entire translation: he'll come. He'll sit at my father's table and eat my father's pierogi, and this thing we are gets to exist in a house that isn't mine.
The plate warms my hands while my throat works itself back open. Theo has downgraded from crying to leaking and is currently blaming allergies. Wall's thumb moves once beneath my hairline.
"Eat."
I pick up the fork. My hand has almost stopped shaking. Neither of them mentions the almost.
I eat, with Theo pressed along one side of me and Wall's palm holding the other, and I let them, these two men my father is planning to feed. Somewhere between bites it settles over me that tonight held the best thing I've done all year.
And it wasn’t the save.